


Repatriation

by Fyre



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Is it really theft when they're reclaiming lost property?, Raiders of the Lost Stuff, Robbery, Theft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-17
Updated: 2020-09-17
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:13:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26512726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fyre/pseuds/Fyre
Summary: When one has been present for the duration of human history, sometimes evidence is left behind. And sometimes, very embarrassingly, it finds its way into a museum.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 99
Kudos: 324





	Repatriation

**Author's Note:**

> I once more have to blame OLHTS for this. I hope y'all are happy.

**1774 – London**

Crowley considered the duck, then hurled the bread with enough precision to knock it spinning with a plaintive quaaaaaaack.

“Crowley!”

The demon hastily brushed off his gloves, as if he had nothing to do with the whirling vortex formerly known as duck.

“Not so loud!” he cautioned as Aziraphale bulldozed towards him, but to his surprise, the angel didn’t stop, grabbing him by the arm and hauling him away from the water’s edge. “Oi!”

“We have to go. Now.”

Crowley darted a wary glance about. “Are they nearby? Should we be seen together?”

Aziraphale stopped for a moment, staring at him. “Oh! No. No, nothing like that.” He gestured emphatically in the direction of the north side of the park. “We need to get to the museum. It’s vitally important.”

“The museum.” Crowley echoed doubtfully.

“You know? The place where they display all the things they collected–”

“Stole.”

“ _Collected_ from around the world.” The angel frantically flagged down a hansom cab.

“I know what a museum is,” Crowley snorted with amusement. “What’s got your knickers in a knot? Find out they have a first edition of something you haven’t read?”

The angel pursed his lips and – to Crowley’s indignant astonishment – bodily lifted the demon and tossed him into the cab. He scrambled in behind, pulling the door shut. “It’s something far more important than that.”

“Such as?” Crowley demanded snippily, straightening up in the seat and smoothing out the creases in his frock coat.

Aziraphale fiddled with his ring, his clear agitation soothing a little of Crowley’s ire. “Do you remember… oh… when would it be? It was Athens. They did those plays and had all the best performers. Do you remember?”

“Oh yes!” Crowley grinned. “They had the revels the night before!” He laughed at the recollection. “Never had wine like that before. I’d swear I could smell colours.”

Aziraphale cleared his throat. “What do you remember about it all?” he inquired, a quaver in his voice. “I mean specifically. Apart from the wine.”

In that respect, the wine really hadn’t helped. Crowley scratched behind his ear. “We ended up at some mad feast. Big fire. Dates,” he said after a few minutes of thought. “A _lot_ of people and not many inhibitions. That skinny bloke playing the old banjo thingie.”

“Lyre.”

“Am not.”

“No,” Aziraphale snapped. “He was playing a lyre.” Hazel eyes darted sidelong at Crowley and away. “Do you… ah… remember anything else? A little later in the evening?”

“I _was_ pretty sloshed,” Crowley said with a grimace. He frowned, picking through centuries of memories. “Oh! Right! Isn’t that when we ate those funny cakes and everyone decided you were Eros and–”

“Yes!” Aziraphale squeaked. “Yes, my wings _did_ unfortunately happen to pop out and… things were said and seen and most of them were artists and theatrical sorts and…” He coughed again. “Well… that’s part of the problem.”

Crowley eyed him suspiciously. “What problem?”

“You’ll see when we get there.”

It didn’t take long to rattle up outside Montagu House and the angel led the way to the doors, waving some swanky bit of paper at the doorman. Another human descended on them to officially welcome them and lead them on their tour.

“We don’t need the full tour,” Aziraphale said. “We’re only interested in the Greek collection.”

The butler or whatever he was bowed politely. “Very good, sir,” he said, buttling on ahead of them.

“Angel,” Crowley muttered, slinking alongside him, “are you going to explain?”

The angel glanced sidelong at him. “I need you to steal something.”

“WHAT?!”

Aziraphale flapped his hand urgently. “Keep it down!” he urged, darting a frantic look towards their guide. “I can hardly go around pinching things from museums and you’re… well… you’re you and you’re meant to cause trouble and everything and–”

“And you assumed I’d just what? Do a smash and grab with no warning?”

The angel turned an impatient look on him. “Oh believe me, you’re certainly going to want to steal this.”

“S’that so?” Crowley raised a doubtful eyebrow. “Can’t think of anything Greek that really took my fancy.”

To his surprise, Aziraphale flushed scarlet. “Well, there is… something you enjoyed as I recalled,” he mumbled, then bustled on ahead, heeled shoes tapping noisily on the polished wooden floor.

Crowley followed, frowning in puzzlement, as the angel stopped beside a glass cabinet. That whole night had been a bit of a blur, and for the life of him, he couldn’t think of a single thing that would convince him to steal–

“Oh! Buggering hell!”

Aziraphale didn’t look at him, and no wonder.

Apparently, both of them had managed to completely miss the fact there was a sodding artist who worked in the red-and-black ceramics oeuvre at the party. One who did very good likenesses. Very good likeneness that were very anatomically accurate and not at all allegorical.

“Do you see the problem?” Aziraphale hissed out the corner of his mouth.

Crowley stared at the bowl. A bowl with them. With them and Aziraphale’s wings out. And oh… oh yeah, they’d got carried away on those bloody cakes and got high in more ways than one. Turned out they’d inspired a very pornographic bit of tablewear in the process.

“Right,” he said as the memory surfaced of Aziraphale and anatomy and thighs. “Yeah. So that’s a thing.”

“I’ll distract him,” the angel slipped into flawless Russian. “You steal it.”

“You know I don’t speak Russian,” Crowley grumbled in Latin. “What am I meant to do? Miracle it away?”

“Though you clearly understood what I said,” Aziraphale retorted in the same language. “And no. Nothing to draw _any_ undue attention from…” His eyes flicked upwards. “Just… do _something_.” He trotted off in the direction of the butler man who was standing a polite distance away, calling his attention to a cabinet on the other side of the room.

Crowley eyed them, then the cabinet. No miracles or supernatural interventions, eh? How convenient that it was in a big hallway and there were some lovely big windows.

The glass of the case smashed under his elbow, then he bolted for the window, cannonballing through the glass and into the grounds below. The little butler man sounded quite put out and Crowley grinned, hugging the bowl as he bolted back for the main road and the city.

An hour later, Aziraphale sidled up to him in the Black Bull.

Crowley pointedly didn’t look at him.

“That was you not drawing undue attention?”

The demon smirked. “Well, not from your lot,” he replied, tilting his glass and draining it. “You owe me a drink.”

“Several, I should think,” Aziraphale said, sounding profoundly relieved. “What did you do with it?”

“Put it somewhere no mortal eyes will ever find it,” Crowley replied airily, gesturing for the barkeeper to refill his glass.

Aziraphale sagged with relief beside him. “At least that was the only one that survived.”

________________________________

**1804 – Paris**

Aziraphale stared at the building then back at the demon. “Really? Here?”

Crowley hunched his shoulders. “I don’t know how they got hold of it! I just… lost track of it a few centuries back.”

“It was a _gift_. I can’t believe you lost it.”

Crowley’s shoulders somehow hunched even further. “Not on purpose!” he protested. “And I didn’t think it was that noticeable. I mean, unless someone who knows us saw it–”

“Which is precisely the problem!” The angel ran a hand over his face. “You’re sure it’s here?”

“Ngh.”

Aziraphale sighed “ _This_ is why I stopped sitting for portraits with you!” As much as he hated to admit it, he did still quite miss the indulgence of sitting amiably alongside the demon in some artist’s studio. Leonardo had been a charming chap. “They are far more obvious than such silly little tokens.”

“I know,” Crowley grumbled, “but you’ll need to do the nicking this time. For some reason, they think I’m untrustworthy and follow me around the gallery like a bad smell.”

“Well, obviously,” Aziraphale sniffed tartly. “I expect to be compensated for this.”

“Crepes?” Crowley offered.

The angel’s lips twitched. “Well. That would do,” he agreed magnanimously. “Now, which gallery am I looking for?”

“They’ve got a Roman wing,” Crowley replied quickly, tugging out a piece of paper with a crude blueprint sketched on it. “Should be in the fourth cabinet from the end.”

Aziraphale plucked it from his fingers, studying it. “Should be quite straightforward.”

“No qualms about thieving from a museum, I see,” Crowley said dryly.

“I’m not stealing,” Aziraphale retorted with a haughty sniff. “I’m retrieving lost property.”

Crowley sniggered. “Keep telling yourself that, angel.”

Aziraphale gave him a cool look before sweeping into the former palace, now a museum. Quite what its name was now, he couldn’t recall, but that hardly mattered. At least he could wander about without any overenthusiastic French ruffians trying to behead him this time.

The place was half-empty, which suited his purposes perfectly, as he headed into the Roman wing.

“Fourth cabinet…” he murmured, hurrying down towards it.

Inside, an array of quaint little goblets were displayed on stands and shelves, though the one in pride of place made heat scorch up his cheeks. It had been a silly commemorative bit of tat, a reminder of the ridiculous night they’d had after too much wine and far too many oysters at Petronius’s tavern.

Crowley had teased him mercilessly, when they realised he’d accidentally hired one of the brothel artists, but when Aziraphale had threatened to smash it to smithereens, Crowley had grabbed it and insisted he was keeping it, even if – and he’d complained loudly about it – he had been on top, not flat on his back as the artist assumed.

His breasts, he decreed however, looked bloody spectacular.

Right. How to retrieve it without drawing the wrong kind of attention.

After several minutes of deliberation, he kicked the candelabra into the curtains and yelled “FIRE!”

Crowley found him rather smoky and subdued on the banks of the Seine some time later.

“You set the place on fire.”

“I panicked!”

“You set. The place. On _fire_.”

“Only the curtains!” Aziraphale fidgeted uncomfortably. “And I helped put it out.”

Crowley snorted, sliding down to sit beside him on the bank. “Yeah, I heard. Big hero, they said. Beat it down with your own dear cravat.”

Aziraphale self-consciously tugged at his open collar. “It was that or my coat and I really quite like this coat.” Still, he fished into the capacious pocket and withdrew the small clay cup. “I believe this is yours.”

The demon took it carefully between his fingers. “Yeah.” He turned it in the thin afternoon sunlight. “My tits still look amazing.”

The angel glanced at the cup with a rueful smile. “They do, rather. It’s been a while since I’ve seen them, though. I can’t say if they’re accurate.”

Crowley tilted his glasses down. “You’re losing your subtle edge, angel.”

“At least that’s all I lost,” he replied with a tick of a smile at one side of his mouth. “Crepes and something else for afters, perhaps?”

“A round of authenticating the historical veracity of the antiques?” Crowley suggested with a filthy leer as he rolled to his feet.

“Well, one can’t be too careful with this knock-offs,” Aziraphale said virtuously. “I have to be sure I got the right item.”

Crowley just burst out laughing.

____________________________________

**1827 – Vienna**

“It’s a splendid piece.”

Herr Fell inclined his head solemnly. “So I have heard. And rather unique.”

Rudolf nodded sagely. “We consider it a great fortune to hold it in our treasury. It was only recently rediscovered.” He gave their honoured guest a smile. “Your reputation precedes you, sir. We would not have brought it out for anyone else.”

“And you believe it is an authentic panel from one of the holy sites in Jerusalem?” Herr Fell trotted along briskly beside him, his companion walking a short way behind. Some kind of stern bodyguard, Rudolf assumed. Watching everything, saying little.

“One of the earliest churches, it is believed,” Rudolf confirmed. “The cherub bearing the flaming sword doing battle with the serpent of Eden.”

“Not stabbing him– er– it surely? I thought the sword was meant to keep the humans in the garden, not slay the wily fiend?”

“Actually,” Rudolf slowed, touching Herr Fell’s arm. “They appear to be… grappling with one another. Hand to… well… snake combat.”

“Gosh,” Herr Fell said. “ _Grappling_. I can’t imagine where the artist came up with such nonsense.”

Rudolf chuckled. “There was even one historian who suggested it might be something far cruder.”

Herr Fell stuttered to a stop. “I beg your pardon?”

Rudolf’s ears warmed, though he leaned closer and confided. “There are… unseemly parts visible.”

“Good Lord!” Herr Fell gasped, pink in the face. “And it’s just up ahead, you said?”

“In the next chamber.”

“I think…” Herr Fell frantically fanned his face with his hand. “I think I may need some air. Are you warm? I’m dreadfully warm!” He turned and bustled back the way they had come, Rudolf dashing after him in concern. A peculiar rasping sound, like leather slithering on stone caught his attention, but he saw nothing.

“Wait!” he called. “Your guard!”

Herr Fell gestured onwards. “I expect he’ll wait for me outside.”

Rudolf nodded, trotting briskly alongside him. “I did not mean to scandalise you, sir.”

“I-I try not to view such things.”

Of course. Everyone who knew of Herr Fell knew he was a religious man. So much so that halfway through the final gallery, he paused, gasping in awe at a beautiful triptych of the holy family. Rudolf could not help admiring his enthusiasm as he waxed lyrical about the colours and symbolism and ever pointed out every colour of stone imbedded in the woodwork.

And again, Rudolf would swear he heard leather whisper on stone.

A cough from the doorway made him turn.

Herr Fell’s guard was standing there. “Mr. Fell. We have an appointment.”

Herr Fell beamed at Rudolf. “Thank you, dear fellow. I’m sorry I wasted your time.”

Outside, the two men retrieved Herr Fell’s trunk and trundled off through the grounds of the Hofburg.

The absence of the very panel Herr Fell had come to view was not noticed for nearly twenty years, when the royal collection was next audited. No one could ever understand where it had gone or how it had apparently slithered out of the building with no one seeing it or being any the wiser.

____________________________________

**1854 – St. Petersburg**

“Shut up! Shut up!”

The skinnier of the two figures gave the stockier a shove, boosting him through the window.

“I told you I’m _stuck_!” The man in the window called down.

Sergei Fyodorov continued to watch them from the end of the wing as they thrash uselessly at each other, then meandered his way down the long gallery towards the window where the stockier of the two men was poking halfway through the window.

He had just managed to haul himself over the sill, spilling onto the floor, when he noticed Sergei standing over him.

“Oh. Oh dear.”

Sergei smiled placidly, swinging down his gun from his shoulder. Entering one of the royal galleries in the dead of night would require no real explanation if his gun went off and he–

“Oi!”

The other man swung in the window and Sergei lowered his gun, staring. He looked from one man to the other. “No.”

“No?”

“You… and you…? You are in the painting!” It was a small piece, one Sergei had marched by on his patrol every night for ten years. He peered at the two men. Yes, there could be no mistaking it. He knew their faces as well as his own mother’s. “It _is_ you!”

The man on the floor, the fair-haired one, got up. “You’ve seen it?” he said, pale as dust.

Sergei nodded eagerly. “It caused much scandal,” he confided, beckoning them. “You must see it too.”

Why he led them straight to it, he could never explain. He loved the painting, despite the fact that the owners hid it away. Indecent, they called it. Sergei had never thought so. Simply two men, closer than brothers, twined in one another’s arms, the red-haired man peacefully slumbering while the fair man read. Naked, loving, as if there was no sin in it.

It had always called out to him. He had adored it from the first moment he saw it.

The red haired man said something in a language Sergei didn’t recognise and it made the fair man smile, small and quiet.

“No, we didn’t, but he always did have a remarkable memory.” He glanced at Sergei. “We have to take it. You understand why.”

Sergei did. “I should stop you. If it is taken, I will be in trouble.”

“No one will know, I promise you that. No one will even notice,” the fair man said and said with such conviction that Sergei believed him at once.

He lifted it off the wall, holding it out. “You will keep it safe?”

“As safe as we’ve kept each other,” the man agreed. He took the small painting with one hand, then grasped Sergei’s hand with the other. “And you will have a good, long life, Sergei Fyodorov.”

As they climbed back out the window, Sergei was surprised to realise he believed them.

____________________________________

**1885 – London**

The gentlemen of Portland place had arranged a special visitation to a unique new exhibit displaying at a particularly private archive room in the museum. Only the most discreet of gentlemen were given an invitation, so Aziraphale had been gratified when the card arrived at the shop.

He donned his best and set out for the museum on the appointed date, pleased to see several of the men of his acquaintance waiting for him in the courtyard. The museum had expanded considerably since he had last visited and he had never ventured down into the archives.

“It’s all rather exciting, isn’t it?” The man Aziraphale knew as Sally said, bright eyed and enthusiastic. “I hear these… items in particular have never been displayed.”

“I can’t imagine why,” Aziraphale murmured. “After all, most men have them.”

The titters that passed through the group would have put schoolboys to shame, as their guide unlocked the door and they were permitted to enter one by one.

The vault itself was unimpressive, but the collection of items displayed on the table was extensive, in all shapes, sizes and media. Bronze and stone lay alongside clay and jade. Some were independent objects, while others had clearly been cleaved off statues or monuments.

“My word,” Madame Victoria breathed, dabbing his lip with his kerchief. “How splendid they are.”

For his part, Aziraphale took more pleasure in checking the labels than in the objects themselves. Where he could, he corrected them, though his eyes fell on a particular jade member – or more accurately a twinned pair – and his heart dropped like a rock.

“Good Heavens…”

“You may touch it, if you like, Mistress Angelique,” Madame Victoria said, grinning. “We have special permission.”

Aziraphale flushed, glancing about the room, wondering if there was some way he might slip it out unnoticed. His fellow Placers were preoccupied, which was a small mercy, and giggling over the other forlorn genitals on display. Comparisons were being made, stone and metal phalluses passing from hand to hand with lewd suggestions accompanying them.

Not one of them noticed the angel slipping closer to one of the rickety shelves by the wall. Certainly, none of them spotted the moment his foot swept the lower leg out with enough force to send the whole overburdened lot toppling over with a crash. Clouds of dust exploded outwards, scattering dust and relics all over them and the table.

“Out, gentleman!” The custodian roared. “This way!”

Aziraphale grabbed the familiar twin phallus, thrusting it down the front of his currently unoccupied underwear, and followed the rest of the gentlemen out. Empty-handed, he stood innocently as the custodian checked each of their hands and their pockets before dismissing them.

“Well, that was rather disappointing,” Edwina sighed. “I had hoped to have a little to-do with one of Zeus’s members.”

“Another day perhaps,” Madame Victoria said. “They are, after all, not going anywhere.”

With the weight of twin jade penii resting snug between his thighs, Aziraphale didn’t say a word as, for the second time in a century, he robbed the British Museum.

________________________________

**1947 – Athens**

The black market was doing a roaring trade.

Monuments that hadn’t already been picked clean by Victorian explorers were providing fresh fodder, and Crowley couldn’t help admiring the nerve of some of the local boys, insisting they knew where to find more, come sir, we’ll show you, and getting paid for days of work at completely barren sites, only sprinkling a few relics when they knew their mark was starting to lose interest.

He’d followed one of the wannabe archaeologists up to a dig.

The silly sod clearly didn’t have a clue what he was on about. Anyone with a good eye could take one look at the landscape and see that it had never been occupied. But daft greedy upper class gents were daft greedy upper class gents and they knew best. Educated at Eton and all that.

Fanning the flames of avarice was an easy enough job.

When said pompous tit took his spoils to the museum, Crowley trailed after him there too, amusing himself poking through the remains of the collections that hadn’t been… ah… acquired by the western powers.

A small bronze figurine caught his attention.

“Ah, balls…”

It wasn’t exactly compromising, but Crowley couldn’t help feeling a surge of territorial possessiveness of the serene nude of a very familiar angel, gazing off into middle distance in contemplation.

He glanced towards the curator and his target.

Well, it’d serve the bugger right if he was arrested for fraud, trying to sell them fake artefacts.

A snap of his fingers and the curator started shouting. And then the gentleman started shouting. And then the small bronze statue – conveniently small enough to fit into a pocket – was gone.

_________________________________

**2020 – The South Downs**

“What do you suppose this was?”

The demon leaned around him to peer into the generous cupboard. “Probably where they kept their water tank or something. Always going on about water tanks, humans.” He slithered around Aziraphale to stand in the room. “Decent size, though. Seems a bit of a waste to leave it empty.”

They were still in the process of taking up residence in the lovely cottage they had bought the previous year, moving portions of their lives in instalments. A greater part of Aziraphale’s book collection had been moved into the library on the upper floor, while Crowley had partitioned the conservatory as something of a greenhouse.

“Oh!” Aziraphale exclaimed in sudden delight. “I know what we can keep here!”

Crowley arched an inquiring eyebrow at him.

“Our spoils!”

“Which ones?”

The angel beamed at him. “Our _booty_ ,” he clarified, clasping his hands together in delight at the thought. “Naturally, we will have to hang the painting in the hall or somewhere, but this could be our own private gallery.”

He saw the moment Crowley understood and started to grin. “You mean our loot?”

“Our cache,” Aziraphale agreed, beaming. “I’m rather looking forward to seeing what you found. I’ve got a few rather lovely pieces I picked up over the years.”

Crowley clutched a hand to his chest, his feigned indignation making Aziraphale chuckle. “You’ve been robbing museums _without_ me?”

“Well, sometimes, one can’t help one’s self,” he replied primly. “Especially when a rather recognisable jade… item is lying around.”

“NGK!” Crowley’s face turned puce. “You found _that_?”

“ _They_ found it,” Aziraphale corrected. “They had it in the room of penii in the–”

“The room of _what_?!”

Aziraphale waved a hand. “Oh, you know the Victorians. Everything was shocking and scandalous unless you had enough money to take a good, long _hard_ look.”

“Angel!”

The angel beamed. “Is that a yes, then? Shall we add display cabinets and have our own little gallery?”

Crowley’s face split in a grin. “Yeah. I think we will.”

**Author's Note:**

> I realised belatedly that I should add some notes:
> 
> \- Bowl was from on of the Dionysias in Athens  
> \- Cup was obviously from Rome and was in the Louvre  
> \- Church mural is a wooden panel from one of the earliest churches and done by an artist who got very drunk with Crowley. It's in the Schatzkammer in the Hofburg where they once found they had three left thigh bones of John the Baptist  
> \- Painting in St. Petersburg was in Catherine the Great's infamous museum and the painting was done by one the Renaissance lads (not sure which) who caught them snuggling   
> \- The jade hemipenis is Chinese and from one of the occasions when Crowley pretended to be a dragon for the lulz. The dick cupboard in the British Museum actually existed at that point - when they removed all the peen so they wouldn't alarm the ladies, they stored them in a specific vault and Gentlemen with a suitable fortune could pay to see them  
> \- And lastly, lets just say the robbing bastards from the western powers were worse than vultures for picking pieces off other countries' stuff so I imagine local Greek lads would take every opportunity to fleece them

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Repatriation](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26548672) by [Djapchan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Djapchan/pseuds/Djapchan)




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